Westcon named ‘master agent’ for Avaya UCaaS offering

Westcon has signed up as one of the first European master agents for Avaya’s new unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offering in partnership with RingCentral.

Avaya Cloud Office was launched in the US in March and will become commercially available in the UK channel on 30 June. The agreement with Westcon covers the UK, Ireland, France and the Netherlands.

Marianne Nickenig, vice-president of collaboration and networking in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Westcon, said the firm was looking forward to being able to provide its partners with an all-in-one cloud solution for voice, team messaging, meetings, video conferencing, collaboration and more.

“With Westcon’s specialised go-to-market approach in collaboration and networking, we are confident that the strong relationships we have across Europe will play an important role in the expansion of Avaya Cloud Office,” said Nickenig.

Avaya announced its plans to sign up master agents at its user event, Avaya Engage, in February. It hopes they will act as an entry for volume partners.

“The value that Westcon provides to its customers throughout its sales process and the relationships that the organisation has across the market will help us accelerate the adoption of Avaya Cloud Office across Europe,” said Avaya international distribution leader Trevor von Puttkammer.

“With Westcon’s specialised go-to-market approach in collaboration and networking, we are confident that the strong relationships we have across Europe will play an important role in the expansion of Avaya Cloud Office”

“At a time when unified communications are becoming more important by the day, we’re confident that Westcon is well positioned to provide our technology to those in need of it,” he added.

Earlier this month, ScanSource announced its status as a master agent for Avaya Cloud Office in the UK.

Targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the vendor hopes that Avaya Cloud Office will expedite its move into the cloud while boosting RingCentral’s channel presence.

Avaya said it wants to steer its partners further towards a subscription, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud sales model. As such, it has increased partner incentives to encourage more subscription and services business.

Fadi Moubarak, channel vice-president at Avaya, recently told MicroScope that “a core component of the channel community is helping the customers with the cloud environment” and those delivering support were “playing a critical role as the trusted advisor”.

Combining RingCentral’s UCaaS platform with Avaya phones, Avaya Cloud Office is an all-in-one solution that delivers calling, team messaging, video conferencing, file sharing and collaboration. Users can use the platform regardless of location, device or application.